Statement of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts on Behalf of National Retail Federation
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Statement of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts on behalf of National Retail Federation submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce for its hearing on “Legislative Proposals to Improve Health Care Coverage and Provide Lower Costs for Families” March 1, 2017 Jon Hurst President Retailers Association of Massachusetts 18 Tremont St., Suite 810 Boston, MA 02108 (617 523-1900 www.retailersma.org On behalf of: National Retail Federation 1101 New York Avenue, N.W., Suite 1200 Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 783 –7971 www.nrf.com Chairwoman Foxx, Ranking Member Scott and honored members of the Committee, I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to offer comments regarding the various legislative proposals currently before the Committee to improve health care coverage for small businesses. My name is Jon Hurst and I am the president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts (RAM) and a member of the National Retail Federation (NRF). Established in 1918, RAM is a statewide trade association of approximately 4,000 member companies. Our membership ranges from independent, “mom and pop” owned stores to larger, national chains operating in the general retail, restaurant and service sectors of the retail industry. The retail industry in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the backbone of our local Main Streets, supporting over 928,000 jobs and operating in more than 73,000 brick-and-mortar establishments. NRF is the world’s largest retail trade association, representing discount and department stores, home goods and specialty stores, Main Street merchants, grocers, wholesalers, chain restaurants and Internet retailers from the United States and more than 45 countries. Retail is the nation’s largest private sector employer, supporting one in four U.S. jobs – 42 million working Americans. Contributing $2.6 trillion to annual GDP, retail is a daily barometer for the nation’s economy. As a leading employer organization advocating for equitable and affordable health insurance coverage for small businesses, RAM would like to voice its support for the Small Business Health Fairness Act (H.R. 1101) as the legislation would allow small businesses to join together through association health plans to provide greater access to affordable health care for their employees. In doing so, this legislation would offer small businesses access to the same cost savings available to larger employers under the ERISA Act. Trade associations, professional societies, and local chambers of commerce and in particular state retail associations can offer a vital bridge to such affordable coverage for their small employer members and their employees. Group health benefits are the key to coverage for more than 170 million Americans. But, not all groups are created equally. NRF has long noted the discrepancy between larger and smaller companies and has supported past iterations of the Johnson-Walberg bill H.R. 1101 to help provide smaller companies better and more affordable access to health benefits. NRF continues that support today and endorses H.R. 1101. Group health coverage balances the risk of health care utilization between younger and older employees, healthy or less so. Employment-based group coverage can be distinguished from public pools because employees come to the business to work rather than to seek coverage, as opposed to a public pool where the sole objective is to obtain coverage. The difference in presentation of risk, though subtle, is important. Private, employment-based group plans work better and provide more affordable coverage. Smaller employers have fewer employees to balance their employees’ various risk profiles. Strategies taken by the Affordable Care Act – the SHOP plans and the rather byzantine small business tax credit – have not helped smaller employees. Steps must be taken to better support these smaller businesses in providing coverage. Association Health Plans are an important answer in our view. Not only do they offer the potential to band with additional small employers in their local state through bona fide trade or professional associations, but it also offers potential to band together with other employer groups in other states utilizing the federal ERISA law to maintain common benefits across state lines. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) our nation’s small businesses and their employees have been relegated to a second class consumer status versus their large, self-insured, ERISA exempt competitors when it comes to access and affordability of health insurance coverage. Allowed to group rate, such large employers avoid the costs associated with unfair levels of cross subsidization experienced in the individual and small group markets. They are also able to avoid the costs of provider pushed, costly state mandates which most consumers don’t want, will never use, and can’t afford. Avoidance of these costs provides significant savings for these employers and places their small competitors at a competitive disadvantage. The ACA, in mandating the purchase of health insurance coverage yet failing to provide consumers equitable treatment under the law in terms of access and pricing is not only unfair it is discriminatory. As called for in the proposal before you today, the solution to this problem is to provide small businesses more flexibility under the ACA to look outside the traditional markets available to them to secure their coverage. This includes providing small businesses, either through industry or professional organizations or on their own, the ability to band together to self-insure and be group rated or in the alternative band together and purchase fully insured products outside the community rated small group and individual markets. Such changes would not only level the playing field for small businesses, but as experienced in Massachusetts under our group purchasing cooperative program, leveraging existing relationships with industry organizations provides small businesses with additional benefits beyond simply securing health insurance coverage. The adoption of the cooperative model in Massachusetts is indicative of our leaders’ bi-partisan support of the concepts underlying the legislation currently before the Committee. And in a recent letter to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Massachusetts Governor Charles Baker reiterated that support when he called on Congress to amend the ACA to “permit insurance products offered through group purchasing cooperatives and professional employer organizations.”1 Today, I echo this request for flexibility for our nation’s small businesses and urge your support the Small Business Health Fairness Act. Introduction to Universal Healthcare in Massachusetts Eleven years ago, the Massachusetts General Court adopted Chapter 58 of the Acts of 20062, (often referred to as “RomneyCare”) mandating universal coverage for Massachusetts residents. While successful in moving Massachusetts towards universal coverage, the law failed to rein in the ever growing cost of coverage and created a system where a subset of consumers—small businesses— were relegated to second class status under the law. As a result, affordability became a significant issue for Massachusetts small businesses, as did their inability to take advantage of essential cost saving tools due to the nature of the state’s merged individual and small business risk pool. Chapter 58 also failed to recognize how small businesses make their employee purchasing decisions, and the important relationship industry and professional organizations play in the ability 1 Governor Charles D. Baker to The Honorable Kevin McCarthy, January 11, 2017, http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/12/read-letter-governor-baker-sent- congress/h9m7B1HrkewyRjxNiNgJnK/story.html?p1=Article_Related_Box_Article 2 https://malegislature.gov/Laws/SessionLaws/Acts/2006/Chapter58 of small businesses to adequately assess and access health insurance options. Rather than leverage these relationships and allow these trusted advisors to serve as access points to the health insurance marketplace, the law relied on government run exchanges to offer small businesses options they did not want. Recognizing these issues, Massachusetts began work on a second set of health care reforms focusing on cost containment, which would eventually pass into law in August of 2010 as Chapter 288 of the Acts of 20103. By that time, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which borrows heavily from the Massachusetts model had already been passed into law at the federal level. In doing so the ACA not only replicated the affordability issues experienced in Massachusetts under Chapter 58, but it also preempted important provisions of Chapter 288 intended to address the problem. As a result our small businesses continue to experience year over year premium increases well in excess of their large competitors and government insureds. Merged Market and State Mandates under Chapter 58 As part of Chapter 58, Massachusetts merged its non-group (individuals) and small group (employers with less than 50 employees) insurance markets into one guaranteed issue “merged” market and prohibited insurers from basing merged market rates on any individual’s or group’s past or projected health claim experience. The rates in the merged market are therefore community rated based on the claims experience of the entire merged market pool. By nature, the community rating structure utilized in the merged market results in significant cross subsidization